(Note: the reviewer mentions reading a homeschooling book written by Calvinists that defined virtue as "doing the right thing when you really don’t want to" ; however, I am pretty sure from my blog-reading that not all believers of the Reformed tradition would think of that as the sole criterion for virtue-- that seems Kantian more than anything else, to me. Please comment if I am wrong about that).

3 comments:

I think it would be more accurate as "doing the right thing *regardless* of how you feel." I definitely started in that camp, but am coming around to see the point that the real goal should be to *want to*. Still, we don't love all that we should, yet we still should do the right thing, and often the love and want to comes *after* the doing it when you knew you should but you didn't feel like it. Perhaps they are stages of virtue. :)

I have been taught to define virtue as a thing being what it ought to be--fulfilling its design. When it comes to people, then, it seems like true virtue would have to include the heart, for it is not simply doing what one ought, but being what one ought. I *do* agree with Mystie, though, that there are times when I have forced myself to do something because I knew it was my duty. I don't consider that virtue, though--I just consider it a step in the right direction. :)

Thanks, Mystie and Brandy,My daughter and I have been talking about this subject (she is reading Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics for college). When you do something because it's the right thing, but reluctantly, I suppose it's like the servant in the parable that says "I will not go" but then goes anyway. The Master approves that, but still better would be the widow who "gave all she had" -- so as you say Brandy, doing something right from your whole heart out of love would be the ideal.